bachmann loco

[Peterm]

When I was using a windoze computer I quite often had to do the 'take the cards out and clean them' trick. Possibly because of the humidity.

[GWR_fan]

Common problem with my HP is occasionally it will not boot up. The fix is to vacuum the RAM cards. Another bugbear is that the HP uses a high flow suction fan to cool the chip. Alas, being so strong it likes to vacuum the whole room so dust builds up on the inlet. A differential pressure switch then sounds an alarm preventing startup. A few minutes of domestic cleaning and the computer starts up normally.

[Bufferstop]

When you have rooms full of computers available to use from 08:00 to 21:30 and rarely find one not in use, you have to leave them on overnight for backups and updates, so the fans in the PSUs got furred up and rattled horribly. The update script always shut them down when finished. So when you opened up in the morning they were all powered but off. The easiest way to turn them all back on was to shut off the room master switch and turn it back on, they would then spring into life and start booting. There would always be the one that made a horrendous scraping sound from the rear fan, the most effective cure was to slap the fan grill with the flat of your hand, the sudden increase in air pressure stopped the fan wobbling and the noise went. No time to attend to the fan, it had to wait until that one could be pulled out of use and into the back room for a going over.